In the physical world, strong credentials exist in the form of state-issued driver's licenses, social security cards, passports, and the like. These strong credentials often bind an individual to the credential with use of a name and a picture. The individual's name listed on this credential identifies the individual, while the individual's picture authenticates this identification.
Because a state agency issues these physical-world credentials, private businesses and the like are able to trust the representations made by these credentials. For instance, when an individual wishes to purchase a lottery ticket from a vendor, the vendor may inspect the individual's driver's license to ensure that the individual is of a proper age (e.g., eighteen). In addition to its strength, a credential such as a driver's license is nearly universally accepted as a proper means of identification.
In the online world, however, attempts to provide a single strong credential have been largely unsuccessful for a variety of reasons. First, online credentials are not issued by state agencies. Instead, private businesses have attempted to stand behind individuals' credentials. Unfortunately, other private businesses often cannot trust these private-business assertions due to industry “know-your-client” regulations. In addition, many of these supposed verified credentials do not accurately identify the credential's holder. This is because the credential-issuing private businesses do very little to ensure that an individual's name is that claimed by the individual. Typically, these companies merely require that the individual activate the issued credential by logging into the individual's given email account. Such an action far from guarantees the individual's identity. Because an individual's identity generally can not be authenticated with use of these existing techniques, these credentials offer very little value.
Due to these and other problems, use of a single credential within the online world has largely failed. Instead, most individuals utilize varying usernames and passwords to sign on to each of an individual's multiple accounts in the online world. Unfortunately, these multiple passwords can be difficult to remember in addition to being insecure.